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Vacation/Out Of Office Tips For The Real Estate Pro On The Go

By: NikNik · Posted on March 11, 2007 · Leave a Comment

The days of setting your out of office reply and not looking back while on vacation seemed to have fallen by the wayside. But you can take some important steps toward making sure your work items are “buttoned up” enough to enjoy your vacation getaway! If you are planning a vacation in the near future and find it a necessity to stay connected with your clients and office while you’re away, you should consider the following:

BEFORE YOU LEAVE

  1. Block off your calendar well in advance.
  2. Let all your colleagues and clients know that you will be gone with a pre-vacation postcard. Have your marketing assistant (which may be YOU) create a postcard style template announcing your vacation dates and who to contact in your absence. (NOTE: Publisher has some great templates you can add your info to.)
  3. Seek help from your colleagues. This may be easy if you work in a team setting, otherwise solicit help from your broker and/or familiar colleague.
  4. If you are on Exchange Server, you may choose to set the Out of Office Assistant. This feature allows you to create an auto reply to all your emails while you are away. To learn more about hosted exchange, click here for 1 & 1′s hosted plans.

TAKE ME WITH YOU!

  1. Cell Phone/PDA Device & Charger
    Know any agents who leave home without their phone? I didn’t think so. Just remember to bring your charger. Also, make sure to check for your charger before your check out!
  2. Laptop
    You can use it on the plane or even at the beach! Download vacation photos from your digital camera to view and share. If you must, do a little light catch-up work.
  3. Wireless Internet
    Check with your hotel before you leave. Most resorts have various Internet capabilities available in your room. If not, and you must check in with the office/or clients…then do it poolside with using a wireless internet connection and Strawberry Daiquiri in hand! You can get a wireless Internet card and data plan from your local cell phone provider. I favor Verizon.
  4. Digital Camera
    Make sure you take plenty of great pictures…they’ll be your motivation for the next big trip when you are back at work!

RE EXTREME: Items for those of us who would like to be on Survivor!

  • Survival Kit In A Sardine Can- A water tight, crush proof, and floatable kit containing a wide array of survival gear for outdoor enthusiasts. Click here to see more.
  • Binocatch 4×28 Digital USB Binoculars- Get a closer look and take a picture too! These USB binoculars provide 4x magnification with a built-in camera that can be used to capture magnified stills or video. Click here to see more.
  • Voltaic Solar Daypack- Keep your mobile phone, camera, MP3 player or PDA charged up while you’re on the go. This backpack has waterproof solar panels that can provide a steady 2A current to recharge many small electronic devices. Includes 12 standard adapters including a USB type A port and a 12V car charger socket, a rechargeable Li-Ion battery pack, and 12V DC and 110V AC battery charging cords. Click here to see more.

Helpful Vacation Checklists:

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Zip Code Facts for Your Real Estate Business

By: NikNik · Posted on March 4, 2007 · 6 Comments
One more resource for your Real Estate Relocation Guides: ZipcodeStats.com and ZipcodeFacts.com (2 domains, one great resource). This beta site offers desirable demographic information for your buyers. You can search by city, area, state, and zipcode; or simply browse by state or zip code. If you select a state or zip code, information has been organized for you according to summary, economic, social, housing, and educational topic areas. With ZipcodeFacts/ZipcodeStats you have access to over 4 million pages of detailed statistics about residents (race, income, ancestries, education, employment) geographical data, crime data, housing, businesses, commutes, economics, schools, and quality of life. The site also utilizes Google Maps to provide great viewing of your selected area. Check it out!
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Searching for the perfect domain name for your Real Estate Website

By: Reggie · Posted on March 1, 2007 · 2 Comments
Many of us have gone through the process of purchasing a domain name. The process can be daunting; trying to hunt for the perfect mix of keywords and branding. So what should you think about when purchasing a domain name? What elements should you focus on? In my opinion, you want to find a name that’s meaningful and well branded to your real estate business first and foremost. If you can work in one or more keywords great! When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) other items outside of the domain name weigh heavily and are even more important than having keywords in the domain. For example, links to your domain, body text, title tags…you get the point. If those other areas are done right, your site will result in successful search engine ranking for your keywords.

That being said, to search for your next domain name there are many options. I typically start my searching and Domain.com. To be honest they’ve been around forever and I like their search layout. I would recommend you use the domain search tool until you find something that works. Then go to 1&1 and purchase the name. 1&1 has most names for $5.99/yr.

If you’re not having much luck using the standard domain name search tools, you should check out JustDropped.com. With the JustDropped engine you can search recently expired domain names. Choose to search by keywords to narrow the results. You can even look forward to search domains that may become available soon. Another choice for expired or soon to be expired domain names is DeletedDomains.com. With this tool you can purchase a membership for about $14.99/mo and have deleteddomains.com email you updates on your search criteria and they will display tomorrow’s expired names.

If you still have not had luck in finding the perfect domain name, try Afternic.com. This helpful tool has been around since 1995. Afternic helps people buy and sell domain names. For buyers, try their advanced domain search. Here you can search the 2 million plus domain names that Afternic has for sale every day. You can search by extensions, price, length, and even previous unique visits each month.

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PacificIT on Blogging for Brokers

By: Reggie · Posted on February 17, 2007 · 1 Comment

Robert Sanzalone has a wonderful presentation developed for Insurance Brokers on the benefits of Blogging. After reviewing this PowerPoint, you’ll too learn what Robert realized…the included concepts can relate to almost every business sector, especially real estate. Read Robert’s article titled “Successful Online Marketing Strategies and Blogging For Brokers”

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Cyberhomes Neighborhood and School Data Now Available

By: Reggie · Posted on February 13, 2007 · 4 Comments

The new Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions (FNRES) product Cyberhomes has just been enhanced with neighborhood and school information. Now when you search for a particular address or city you will be presented with this new information. FNRES has partnered with Great Schools and Sperling’s Best Places to bring you this detailed set of data.

Cyberhomes’ neighborhood information now includes local housing facts, such as 12-month appreciation levels, how many people own, rent and how many homes are vacant. The new Cyberhomes coverage also includes population facts such as population density, graduate levels and median age. All these facts are compared against both state and US numbers. Cyberhomes also details the local economy sighting numbers such as median household income, sales tax, unemployment rate and projected job growth.

The Cyberhomes school information displays test scores and census data provided for both public and private schools and it’s enhanced with meaningful graphs. Parents will also appreciate the unbiased school profile information.

And of course the new Cyberhomes enhancement would not be complete without localized weather. Cyberhomes displays altitude, rainfall, snowfall and average temperatures at different points throughout the year.

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Survey Options For Your Real Estate Business

By: Reggie · Posted on February 12, 2007 · 1 Comment

I was recently engaged in a conversation about Surveys in Real Estate and I stood behind my view that agents should use these tools! Do you really know the interest level of customers visiting your open home? Do they have vital information to share if you ask just the right question? Why risk it, today there are tons of survey options designed to make the creation, deployment and tabulation easier than ever! Now with hosted solutions such as SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, and Survey Monkey anyone can capture the information they desire. And if you’re interested in hosting your own survey tool, take a look at Dominion Webs’ DW Survey script.

With your survey tool of choice, you can easily create a template survey for various situations. To start, you should have a “Prelisting Presentation Survey.” This template will be used when you land a new listing appointment. Simply forward it out via email with your prelisting packet, and you’ll have a chance to collect valuable seller feedback before you have the listing presentation. As a result you can address any issues brought up by the survey.

You may also want to gather feedback of potential buyers as they leave an open house. This is a great opportunity to find out their true intentions. I’ve heard various stories about transactions being saved by discovering information through consumer feedback. A few other ideas may include a survey of the selling party after you didn’t get a listing, or follow up a successful close with a post-closing satisfaction survey.

For tips on creating a survey, take a look at eHow’s article.

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Google Maps for your Real Estate Buyers Tour

By: Reggie · Posted on February 4, 2007 · 2 Comments

So you’re going out to show real estate…have you thought about giving your buyers pinpoint driving directions? And then your directions sorted in best line-of-travel? Google Maps new “Add Destination” feature is the perfect solution.

  1. Visit http://maps.google.com.
  2. Click Get Directions, and then add your starting location.
  3. Enter stop #2 as the destination, and select Get Directions.
  4. Click Add Destination on the left-hand side and enter location #3.
  5. Repeat step #4 as needed.
  6. Now click and drag the addresses to the best order based on the visual displayed on the map.

If you would like to email the directions or send the directions as a link to your buyers, just click the corresponding link above the map. Your resulting map will guide you in the best route you selected while also displaying drive distance between locations.

**Mapquest also has a similar tool. Check out Athol Kay’s story here.

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Relocation Guides: The Art of Information Compilation

By: NikNik · Posted on February 1, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Providing your clients with an up-to-date relocation guide for their new home town can be time-consuming, expensive, and downright frustrating. There are great resources out there that can help like Sunray Publications, a company specializing in making quality relocation guides. These can sometimes require a minimum order and be quite costly. Sunray does offer a more cost friendly choice with their new pocket relocation guides. However, if you decide to go the other route by creating your own area guides, there are a few tips and resources I can share with you (from someone who has done a few). I know what you are thinking, create one myself. Too much work! It’s not for everyone, but if you do choose to make one yourself, you will be able to easily edit, update and personalize it. And you have complete control over all your own content and branding. The following guidelines and resources can help you create your own area specific guide.

Whether you are creating a county or city guide, you should start with an outline. I would begin in Word and when you are finished compiling your info, transfer it into a Publisher template with design of your choosing. Publisher has great templates that you can customize easily, or just start from scratch. Section 1 of your outline should be the introduction to the city/county (history, background, interesting facts, life today). Make sure you list the website for the specific city or county as well (you will get much of your information there). In section 2, list all the major civic offices and contact info including City Hall, Public Works, Chamber of Commerce, DMV, etc. People always find statistics interesting as well, so include a brief section 3 of items like population, elevation, median home price, total number of housing units, etc. You don’t have to go wild, just a few fun facts that you find will do. The US Census fact finder site is helpful here (factfinder.census.gov).

Section 4 of your relocation guide is extremely useful information and should include all utilities, city/county departments, and emergency contacts such as: animal control, cable/satellite television, fire department, gas & electric, garbage, library, police department, post office, recycling, water, etc. Use the county and city websites to search for this information. You can make an additional section to spotlight special venders to share as a referral list. Other helpful websites for compiling this info may include www.discoverourtown.com and www.relo-usa.com.

In section 5, provide the contact information for the parks and recreation department as well as a list of nearby parks and recreational areas. I like to use www.epodunk.com for this. You can use their park search feature to find parks within a certain distance around your city or county. I usually select within 15 miles. You can even visit and list the park website (if applicable).

In section 6, list all the school district contact info (you can usually find this on the city/county website). There may be several school districts, or even nearby districts that also serve students in your area. You will also want to list all contact information for public and private schools in the area. You can find this info on the city websites, district websites, or if you live in California, visit www.schoolwisepress.com, and for nationwide school info, check out www.greatschools.net and www.schoolmatters.com.

Lastly, the area you are collecting info on probably has something its known for or something special about it that new homeowners would REALLY like to know. So in section 7, include any area specific info like a list of wineries, yearly festival info, transportation highlights, etc.

When you have finished compiling your info, you will need a snazzy design and pictures for your relocation guide. Go out with your digital camera and start shooting! Including local pictures of downtown, landmarks, parks, schools, neighborhoods, etc. will really customize and breathe life to the city or county information you are providing in the guide. Remember this is just a guideline, so feel free to be as creative or brief as you like. After you have completed your beautifully branded, custom relocation guide, don’t forget to update it regularly (or at least yearly)!

Resources in Review: